WE must remember that Maria Josepha Dolores, Condesa del Torre y Luna, was a lonely young girl, educated but from books, devoutedly believing in a faith we like to think superstitious. Remember, please, also, that she loved, and braved her Church for love, and had not, so she thought, won his. She deemed her soul was damned; she knew her heart was broken. Not that there were no days when she did dare hope; no days in which she tried to frame a theory by which it still might seem he cared for her; but she believed he was borne down by their great guilt. And she resolved his soul, at least, would not be lost for hers. “My lady Marquesa would have her apartments in all the house,” the letter said. “My lady had but to command. A small room in the tower was enough for him--he could but rarely be home from the wars. He trusted, if his presence was painful, she would not see him,” etc., etc. And, after many months, when the General came back--his wife met him not. The rooms of state were carefully prepared for him, and all his suite; flowers, banquets were ready; all his retinue and hers, in their joint blazonry, were in attendance. Only, strangely enough, just that little tower-room was the one my lady Marchioness preferred. Would he kindly yield it to her? Of course, and the General sent her a rope of pearls. They almost broke her resolution; but she met him not. The General only sighed; this was all as he had known. The evil nephew, done to death by his own hand, still had her heart. He sighed and his hair grew whiter. One rending memory came over him, of the last time he had seen her eyes. He could not know, as he rode homeward up the street, after his first state visits, straining his eyes up to that tower-window frowning so blankly, how late her own had left it--those eyes of purple-gray that every beggar in Carácas soon knew well, save only he. Before the next return his glory blazed abroad, and Bolivar came back with him. Bolivar, the Liberator. All thoughtful preparation, all courtly care, all a Spanish grandee’s splendor was spread forth to receive him in the Casa Rey; but the châtelaine was never seen. It was not necessary to explain her absence; such things get quickly known; it was, of course, thought she had loved the cousin. And the strange Old-world Gothic pride made her bearing, the honor of the house, del Torre’s silence, only too easily intelligible to them. So the Marquis del Torre never saw his bride on his returning home. But, had he known it, he never opened a door that she had not vanished through it. He never touched a flower she had not placed for him. He never looked in a mirror her gray eyes had not just left. He never touched a wine-glass to his lips that her lips had not kissed it. The very missal that he read from had been warmed within her bosom.